


Temptation That Doth Goad Us

by Anonymouspotato



Category: Cinderbrush (Web Video), Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Bullying, F/M, Introspection, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, Polyamory, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Doubt, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22766644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymouspotato/pseuds/Anonymouspotato
Summary: Everybody’s got a dark side. All teenagers have hormones. When the two meet, the results can be...troubling.(Or, an exploration of the Darkest Self mechanic in four parts.)
Relationships: Jamie Wrenly/Cameron Solomon/Abigail "Aff" Flowers/Sasha Murasaki
Comments: 62
Kudos: 327





	1. Witchcraft In Your Lips

**Jamie**

Sometimes, Jamie is callous.

Okay, that’s a lie. Sort of. Jamie’s always at least a little bit callous, a little bit wretched. It’s how they’ve survived a world that views them the way it does.

But they’ve learned to tune that voice out. Sometimes with a pair of earbuds. Sometimes with an incantation in a tongue they don’t fully understand.

Jamie’s mother loves them, really she does, but ever since they first caught the notes of the dark song in their blood and pulled them into a melody all their own, a crack has grown between the two of them. The Wrenly household is one divided against itself. There is no truly stable support to lean on.

Jamie moves through their life as an enigma. They learn the language of gestures, back alleys, and turns of phrase that make up the Burtonesque underbelly of small town Arizona. They have contacts. They have associates. They have clients. What they don't have is friends.

Until The Incident.

They can feel the anger bubbling in their blood like molten tar as they weave barbed wires of magic into Terrance, and in that moment their craft surges through them with potency and potential. It’s Absinthe and moonlight, earthquakes and rose thorns. It’s everything a person could ever need to get anything they want. They survive the day on that head rush high, and for that, Jamie is grateful.

It is the first time Sasha, Aff, and Cam see them as petty and ruthless as they could be when it was all truly on the line. It will not be the last. After all, there’s plenty of time to get to know each other ahead.

Their Craft is not a gentle one. They had learned the basics from a gentle teacher, a kind woman they had met in a back alley in New York. She had taught them the value of the positions of Venus (the strength of spells pertaining to emotion) and the symbology of arugula (cleverness in matters of finance) with sidewalk chalk and an old gumbo pot. She had found the fierce, untamed part of their heart and taught them to push it into the world, and for that, Jamie is grateful. But Charms and Blessings were not the Craft for them. The woman had known this, and given them half a dozen phone numbers, two URLs, an address in the Bronx, and a black tome wrapped in leathery chains. 

They followed the woman’s rabbit hole of clues, learned the best times to meet with the Fae Courts (either very early in the morning or very late at night, under a clear lunar phase) and how to reach into people’s minds and force the truth from their tongues ( _ satislaf muroe oitucrep artsev augnil _ ). Hexes, Jinxes, and Curses were much more their speed.

Their teachers in these arts, a dwarfish man with an angelic wife, and a red headed man with a heavy accent, told them that such powers were not for the faint of heart-Magicks shaped the caster as much as the reverse. Jamie hadn’t listened.

They should’ve.

They had always been a little bit callous. But when Absinthe-moonlight-earthquake-roses moves through them, it is easy to fall into all-the-way-callous.

It was a sharp, indelicate thing, like a glass braided bullwhip. They wielded it with reckless abandon, careless of who was caught in the crossfire. Jamie under stress was Jamie without restraint.

They weren’t a moral person, but they weren’t exactly an  _ immoral _ person, either. Under most circumstances, at least. When the magic curls through them, the voice that keeps them from crossing the most sacred of lines dies out. They can screw illusions through the minds of anyone they please, with a strand of hair or a given name or an old pair of panties (usually something like the first two, but they weren’t picky).

In those moments when they swing their craft with reckless abandon, it is hard to keep the worst of it bottled up. You were meant to stopper off the excess, to keep from hurting yourself or letting the magic curdle and mutate in unexpected ways, but when Sasha is at gunpoint, when Aff is on Hades’ doorstep, when Cam is pressed into the dirt by something Eldritch and  _ wrong, _ Jamie’s precise Magicks become cudgels. 

(These weapon metaphors were horrible mixed. But so was the Craft.)

They lose their grip on reason and restraint, and the results are truly spectacular.

Hexes and Curses fly from their grasp like feral creatures, leaping at the jugulars of anyone in reach. It doesn’t matter, in those moments, because others don’t matter. In those moments, Jamie is more done with bullshit than they have any mortal right to be. There is no waiting. There is no subtly. There is only action, and vengeance.

It’s a bit like Sasha’s personal darkness, if they think about it (they try not to think about it). Perhaps that’s why they’ve always gotten along so well, even before the Seven Dwarves of Big Pharma entered their lives.

Of course, Sasha cannot do the things Jamie can. No one can, in this middle of nowhere shitstain of a town. Jamie is superior, exceptional, undefeatable, and they refuse to put up with Cinderbrush’s insistence on ignoring its growing reputation in certain circles as ‘The Shadow Capital of the Southwest’. It’s a title that comes with more contacts, associates, and clients. And problems.

The four of them had gotten more careful, after The Incident. None of them had been arrested again, so that was alright. But they all knew they were one step from disaster, from becoming the monsters they fought when the sun went down and there was nothing more interesting to do. (And sometimes when there was, but Jamie doesn’t think about that.)

When Jamie crosses that line, they become something monstrous, and they know it. They don’t much care, even when those moments are over.

(They still try not to think about it.)

Escaping is hard. It doesn’t just require clarity. It requires courage. It requires a willingness to bear an olive branch instead of an arrow. It requires enough peace for the drive to  _ dominate destroy overcome _ to run out of juice. That is hard, not just because Jamie is not a peaceful person by nature. Often, the people they must look at with that kind of kindness are the very people hurting them, or worse, their partners, who have been the subject of their bloodiest Craft as a consequence. It is not easy to look the insectoid monster who you nearly turned into mincemeat in its bulging compact eyes and say “I’m sorry.”

And yet somehow, they do it. 

It often takes time for that peace to be accepted, but police sirens make an excellent incentive.

And when the boiling darkness in their chest has settled into something smooth like asphalt, Jamie deals.

They often spend the hours after those surges of toxic ambition in seclusion, in their sanctuary in the quarry. A place where they can feel safe, can get high and take their mind off what they’ve done. 

They still usually get high, but now there’s usually at least one other person there.

“You broke out the strong stuff!” Aff chuckles one such evening. “You feeling okay?”

“Snug as a bug in a rug.” Jamie replies. They’re high as a kite, and it numbs the crawling guilt up their spine enough that they don’t really have to try. 

“Hey.” Cam takes a long drag from the vape they’ve been passing around. “Do you ever think about how you’re, like, the sweetest one out of all of us?”

“Oh, fuck no.”

“Hell are you on?” Sasha slurs from her spot in the corner.

“Same thing as you!” Cam laughs, a high clear sound that makes warm earthy sweetness bloom in Jamie’s chest. “But really. When your magic gets all crazy. It’s ‘cause people are in danger. You’re the only one of us who’s like that.”

“You’re joking.” Jamie swipes the vape 

“Just...just think about it.” Cam rolls over, and starts kissing Aff’s neck. Aff, for their part, looks between the three of them with utter adoration in their eyes. It’s so open, so fresh, nothing like the feral snarling monster they were no more than an hour and a half ago. Jamie wonders if they’re like that, when the cords of their resistance snap and they become all they could be. If the contrast is the same, if not quite so strikingly visceral. 

Sasha crawls over the bundle of raw affection and collapses in to Jamie’s lap, blowing vape smoke in their face. “Wanna show ‘em how it’s done, baby?”

“Didn’t Cam manage to entertain you for two years?”

“I heard that!” Cam shouts, before returning to sucking hickies into Aff’s neck.

“Variety is the spice of life, as they say.” Sasha whispers in Jamie’s ear. 

“Shut the fuck up.” They grabbed the back of her neck and melded their mouths together. 

And for now, Jamie doesn’t have to think about the ever-blacking edges of their conscience.

(Even if they probably should.)

  
  



	2. Fiendlike Queen

**Sasha**

Sometimes, Sasha is cruel.

If anyone from Cinderbrush High heard you say that, they’d probably laugh out loud.  _ ‘Sometimes?’ _

Truth be told, Sasha usually didn’t like being cruel. It was an unfortunate necessity, a means to justify her end. Cruelty was messy, inelegant. It made enemies that couldn’t easily be misdirected. She often had better tools at her disposal to assert her dominance.

A well timed wink, a deliberate crossing of the legs, a flick of the tongue over teeth. It was so much easier to make people  _ want  _ to do useful things than force them into it. She could be persuasive, deceptive, intimidating if need be.

Still, if it came to it, she was well-versed in cruelty. She had been steeped in it, molded like leather to its shape.

Sasha was cut from the same cloth as her parents, through and through. Mr. and Mrs. Murasaki were not cruel, per say, but they were capable of great depths of cruelty. They were businesspeople, cufflinks and real pearl necklaces, financial minded types. Knife sharp and ice cold, how could they create a daughter that was anything else?

Sasha had known that since she was young and dewy and new to the world, mostly because that softness had been ironed out and clipped away slowly, methodically, until there were no vulnerable spots left.

They were alright parents, she supposed. They had put a roof over her head, and good food on her plate. They hadn’t been bedtime story, chocolate chip cookie, school play patron parents, but they had done what they’d needed to, and they’d done it well.

(So maybe they had been cruel. But Sasha didn’t know how to think of them like that.)

They had taught her from a young age that Murasakis were  _ better _ than such nonsense. They had crawled from dirt to gold dust, and Sasha would be their greatest legacy. She was instructed in the rules of polite society, on how to entice without seeming tawdry and how to disconnect without seeming rude.

And how to entice while seeming tawdry. But that came later.

( _ “Sit up straighter, Sasha, it’s improper to slouch. Blend your eyeshadow in better, you look like a whore. Keep your boyfriend out of your room, Sasha, or people will talk.” _ )

Cameron never said anything. But he had his own shadows at home. They fell into each other’s arms almost by accident, the products of cracking homes and crushing expectations. It was nice, to find solace in the arms of someone familiar with your particular haunting. To just be a teenager, to step under the warm sun for beautiful, golden moments, before returning to the confines of their two distant towers.

(Maybe he should have said something. She probably should’ve too. But they never did.) 

She read psychology books when she was older, in part because her parents liked them, but mostly just for fun. The concept of ‘Nature Versus Nurture’ worms it’s way into her mind as she constructs a hive around her, crowning herself queen. Is Sasha Murasaki cruel by nature? Or was the cruelty injected into a cherub of a girl who would’ve been innocent as a bird otherwise?

Eventually, she decides that she’s cruel either way, so it doesn’t really matter.

And soon, her hive is built, and she is the queen bee.

She picks her favorites, her court, by hand. Beauty without peer (almost). Connections in the absence of parents (it reeked of familiarity). And a rival brought low. Amazing what a few photos worth of blackmail material could do to a person. She relied on them, in some ways. And they relied on her.

It wasn’t often people failed her. But when they did, she unleashed the beast with abandon.

She was cruel, when the incompetence of others dragged her down. Really, truly cruel, not the halfway play cruelty they practiced at school. She ground creatures to sand beneath her heel just because she  _ could, _ because she  _ wanted to. _ If they hadn’t wanted to be treated like scum, they shouldn’t have stepped to Sasha Motherfucking Murasaki. She had no magic power, no great supernatural destiny to match her enemies, but she didn’t need one. She was perfect as is.

(She knew she wasn’t perfect. The shriveled, small part of her that might have been her parents and might have been her better judgement said so. But she ignored it.)

She enjoyed the looks on the faces of skulking vampires and vengeful ghosts as she stepped forward with smug confidence in her eyes, and told them they had one chance to do something of some consequence with their pathetic, pointless unlives and fall to their knees before her. While suspicions of her and her half-secret allies following The Incident had never died, they were suppressed by those same airs, kept to bathroom stall graffiti and whispered conversations in the corners of the school where they were not. Of course, social media threw a wrench of anonymity into the problem. But she had her own digital minions.

She was always haloed by the darkest edges of her nature, now. At school, around town, and on the hunt.

(Originally, she objected to this whole ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ idea, but the look on Aff’s face when they proposed it made her frozen over heart melt just a touch.)

Many of the fantastical and macabre creatures she now found booking her Saturday evenings looked down on her at. A puny mortal girl with a pleated skirt, dark eyes, and a cherry red grin. When that smile turned venomous and vicious, well, the bigger they are…

Let her combat-capable partners handle the messy parts. She could deal the killing blow by triggering the trap they’d so expertly crafted, and then the boys and girls in blue could take care of the rest. Such business was beneath her anyway.

( _ “You’re weak.” _ Says the nasty, shriveled voice in the back of Sasha’s mind.  _ “They don’t deserve someone like you.” _ )

She doesn’t deserve them either.

Often, she surfaces from the dark currents of her ego by pushing off the back of something else. Destroying someone so thoroughly and utterly there was nothing left to salvage. 

More often than not, said someone was an innocent caught in the crossfire. 

One time, after they had knocked out a feral Ghoul who had been skulking the outskirts of their town, Sasha charged forward through the house until she found the renovated office where the creature’s future victims were being held. By the time Aff had found her, she had driven the woman bound with rough rope in the corner of the room to tears.

_ “How the fuck are you so weak? You goddamn waste of oxygen. Now we have to come and save you because you’re too incompetent to save yourself.” _

(Aff had dragged her away, and told the woman Sasha was upset and frustrated, that she didn’t mean what she had said. Though she’d never admit it, she was grateful.)

To take someone innocent and make them her bitch, watch them crumble like a relic of another distant time, was  _ satisfying, _ in the same way closing a pair of scissors or pressing on a bruise might be. She could picture it in her mind's eye, her mother and father smiling at her, pride glimmering in their eyes like diamonds.

(They’d been fighting more and more lately. They must’ve thought they could have kept each other’s egos in check. They were very, very wrong.)

Soon, though, it became clear this was only a stopgap. A flimsy pile of wood and sandbags against a rushing, bloody tide. 

To truly escape her darkest impulses, Sasha didn’t have to take. She had to  _ give. _ To tell someone that she  _ did _ trust them, that she  _ was _ flawed, that she  _ wasn’t  _ always perfect. It goes against everything her family had ingrained in her from her birth. ( _ “You must never show weakness, Sasha. The weak are to be eaten, so the strong may survive.” _ )

Humility. She regrets it, but craves it, like the worst kind of addict.

One night where the sky had decided to tear open and drown all of Arizona, Aff opened their door to find Sasha. Fist clenched, clothes soaked, eyes full of tears.

“Oh no, Sash, what happened to you?” Aff took her hands in theirs and gently brought her inside.

“I...I need...” Sasha bit her lip. “I need your help.” The last word was just above a whisper.

Aff scanned Sasha analytically for a second, wary for creatures that could have shifted into their girlfriend’s form, before smiling like a campfire and running off to get some towels. They dried her off, quick but gently, and wrapped her in a blanket. Sasha let them.

After they both got situated on their bed, Aff grabbed their phone and texted Cameron and Jamie: ‘Our busy bee is in need of some RnR’.

‘Be right there🖤’

‘I can’t go folks are being aholes

Tell her I love her’.

“Cameron says he loves you,” Aff ran their fingers through Sasha’s messy silver hair. She hummed, contented, and wriggled deeper beneath the blankets.

“Ghh. Tell him his ass looked especially lovely today.”

“Will do!” Aff settled down next to their girlfriend and texted Cameron just that (the response was a peach emoji) before pulling up Candy Crush. Less than ten minutes later, there was a knock at their window.

Jamie was knocking on the glass, a wry smirk on their face, “How’s she doing?”

Sasha sat up in bed and let herself make childish grabby motions.

“Pretty good, I think. I’m pretty proud of myself.” Aff smiled, and pulled their partner inside. Jamie cracked their knuckles, and all but tackled Sasha to the bed. Aff settled in on her other side.

( _ “They’ll betray you. You’re an idiot for trusting them. What will your parents think?” _ )

_ “My parents can go fuck themselves. I’ve got what I need right here.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sasha’s honestly the character who I have the hardest time getting to sound ‘right’ (I’m kind of the opposite of her, personality wise). I hope this satisfies!


	3. Wake Not a Sleeping Wolf

**Aff**

Sometimes, Aff is angry.

Well, sort of. Kinda. Not really.

It’s not like Aff is  _ always _ angry. At least, anger isn’t always the first thing on their mind. It’s more like a pot of water on the stovetop. And eventually, inevitable, that pot boils over.

Really, their whole emotional spectrum feels like that. Joy, sorrow, rage, terror. Everything that could be muted wasn’t. Everything that couldn’t? Don’t get them started.

Aff had always been like that, even before  _ it _ happened. Their parents had many stories of their short temper from when they were small. But it was really after  _ it _ happened that it started to get serious.

_ It  _ happened mid afternoon on the day they went home from middle school summer camp. Aff was leaning against the cool divotless glass of the car window, lips still tingling with the remnants of yesterday’s fun, when the car broke down. While their dad was trying to fix the busted engine, they had wandered into the tangled woods on the side of the road.

At first, it seemed like something out of a fairytale, a storybook illustration come to living three-dimensional texture. The sunlight tricked down through the perfect green leaves like a divine caress. The wildflowers peaked up from the grass like technicolor freckles on the Earth’s skin. A few, picturesque moments of woodland glory, wild and free.

And then the glass illusion was shattered by a growl.

Aff doesn’t remember much of what happened after that. Gravel in their skin. A triumphant howl. Their father’s screams. And  _ pain, _ hot clammy pain, clasping like a vice into their left shoulder.

Then they were in the hospital, with bandages on their shoulder and a feral ember in their soul.

Shortly after that, their parents had split after the incident with Mr. Wrenly. And Aff was drifting, lost and confused, trapped in a body that felt wrong, too round and too small.

Bits and pieces of the wolf eked out every once and awhile on their own. Their hair got thicker and coarser, their senses sharpened, the nervous ticks that showed weakness went from beneath notice to glaringly obvious. Aff got used to the little changes.

But there was a darkness, a wild creature of shadow and jaw and red, burning in their gut. Anger, always eager to consume their being, to immolate their flesh and forge them into a monster. It was a subconscious call, the siren’s song of the hunt. 

Sometimes, when the moon, Aff’s mother in absence of their mother, was full, they gave into the fur and fang, and leaped among the mesas and valley of the outskirts of town. They woke up in secluded corners and alleys, clothes ripped, the taste of animal blood in their mouth, and the fire in their belly...not  _ smothered, _ exactly, but sated. Satisfied, for the moment.

But the anger never left. It always growled in the back of their mind, alert and eager to tear the world to pieces. And sometimes, when the world seemed so eager to jump at them and the people they loved, Aff listened and let the growl in.

They were sharp of vision, but blind. Clear of instinct, but impulsive. So much, yet so hindered by their very nature.

And it felt  _ fantastical. _

If someone needed protecting, they could protect. If someone needed to get hurt, they could hurt them. Let their partners, their pack, be the brain. They could reach out and do what the rest of them couldn’t. They could be  _ useful. _

Blood stained their brown fur red, ran from their claws like a red river, filled their mouth like the sweetest honey. They rendered, and wrathed, and  _ raged _ like some unholy abomination.

(It scared them. How vicious they could be. They sometimes wanted to be serene, and soft, but they’d been dragged out of the cave into the sun, kicking and screaming.)

Enemies might have twisted beneath Jamie’s wonders and Sasha’s words and Cameron’s will, but before them, they fell like old, decrepit trees, lingering rot that needed to be razed and renewed. They cleaved through enemies like a mandolin, crushed their spirits like a dull office job or a Lovecraftian monster.

(Sometimes they were Lovecraftian monsters, which made it both sweeter and  _ way  _ more fucked up.)

Aff’s feral senses sang with delight, filled the up with a kind of vicious satisfaction that should have felt wrong but felt so  _ right  _ in their bones, in their heart, that once they were pulled under they couldn’t pull themselves back up. The wild, lupine curse etched into their soul when they were still tender and small was unchained, evoked,  _ alive. _ It felt like they couldn’t contain it. 

(Mostly because they couldn’t)

The Wolf Within was no precise sword or rifle. It wasn’t even something blunt but controlled, like a mace or an axe. No, it was an explosion, a volatile reaction, an AK-47 with fur.

(Now they’re picturing a handgun covered in faux fur, which is actually kind of funny.)

They were free from restraint, yes, but also from regret. Try as they might, they couldn’t care less about what they did when they were transformed. Aff was the wolf, but the wolf wasn’t Aff. Sort of. Kinda. Not really.

They still didn’t quite know how to define it, this ever-blurring line between iron and dirt, family and pack, the who and the what of who and what they were. They knew it was there, and they knew once they crossed it, they couldn’t come back on their own. But they didn’t know where it was yet. It was abstract, an ideal or a commandment, not really a rule. They wondered if others of their kind felt the same way.

They’d only met one other. An old, grizzled hunter of man and beast alike, who they ran into exactly once, one full moon in the quarry. He had wanted to explore Cinderbrush, to learn a bit about the bizarre forces that suddenly found themselves pulled to the city like a beacon in the aftermath of The Incident. Aff’s mind pounded with  _ danger, rival, your territory, _ but they kept as cool of a head as they could. They gave him one week. He kept his word.

They had spoken that night, hunted together in the Arizona desert. They had asked him if breaking the surface of the bloody tides ever got easier.

He said no.

(They didn’t want to believe it, but in their heart of hearts, they knew it was true.)

When they ran out of enemies to cut down, and they had fled into the shadows of the night, Aff’s rage lashed out liquid and unstable. It needed focus. It needed blood, death, rot. And there were three very squishy humanoids right next to them.

Once, after they had knocked out a group of mutated rabbit men and disappeared into the urban sprawl with their partners, their nose picked up the drying blood from the bite on Sasha’s shoulder, and they couldn’t help themselves. They reached out and swiped, tearing her shirt and flesh like butter.

And it all screeched to a halt.

Aff  _ screamed. _ They screamed, and convulsed, and pushed and pulled into something human (well, mostly). They collapsed to the ground in the alley, dressed only in tattered clothes and blood.  _ Sasha’s _ blood.

They started to cry.

“Ghhh.” Sasha gripped her shoulder, then knelt down in front of Aff. “Babe, we’re gonna get you back to your house, and I’ll get patched up, alright?” She turned around. “Cameron.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Cam knelt down and picked Aff up so they were piggyback riding him, and the group trekked across town to the Flowers residence. Aff whimpered and nuzzled Cam’s neck, breathing deeply of his familiar scent of AXE body spray, cotton candy Faygo, and something spicy and rich that seemed otherworldly. Soon enough, they had arrived.

Jamie picked the lock, no issue, then reached into their Pouch of Magical Shit and pulled out a paste of rosemary and lavender. Sasha pulled off their blouse (Aff was too delirious to be horny right now, but it was still a nice view) and let Jamie smear the poultice over the wound. She hissed between her teeth, but the wounds began to clot as Jamie wrapped them in bandages.

Cam set Aff down on the bed, then pressed a small kiss to their forehead. “You doing alright?”

Aff shrugged, and gestured to Sasha. “As I can be, I guess. Are you?”

Cam gestured vaguely at his head. “Just the normal whispers.”

“Someday, we’re gonna kill that son of a bitch.”

“God, I hope so.” Cam settled down behind Aff on the bed. “Right now though, we need fucking sleep.”

“Here, here!” Sasha gingerly tucked herself under the covers, half underneath Aff’s chest, and her boobs were  _ right there, _ and suddenly they had a whole other worry. 

Jamie sat down on the bed behind Cameron and reached back into their PoMS. “Want some help with that?”

“Yeah, yes please.” Aff rolled over onto their back. Jamie pulled out what looked like wet sand, and sketched a loose glyph on their forehead. Aff felt their eyes pulled closed as the hungry ghosts of sleep dragged them down.

(They dreamed of beautiful forests and the wind at their back and their pack at their side, wild and free.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that wasn’t supposed to happen. I apologize for that absurdly long gap.


	4. All The Devils are Here

**Cameron**

Sometimes, Cameron is broken.

And that, really, is the whole truth. Cameron didn’t choose this, wasn’t guided into this, doesn’t even have bad luck to blame. He brought this on himself, plain and simple.

(At least, that’s what the voices in his head say.)

Once upon a time, he had had everything. He lived out his childhood in the Garden of Eden, picking ripe juicy fruits and frolicking in Arizona mesas that made decent substitutes for meadows. He had a Mommy and a Daddy and a puppy and more privilege than you could shake a stick at. To be fair, he was still pretty privileged, but that was pretty much the only thing on that list he hadn’t lost.

The puppy had died of heart worms, and the parents? Well, that was more complicated.

Cam had mentally categorized his relationship with his parents into Before and After. He didn’t know exactly where the divide was, didn’t remember when occasional arguments turned into frequent shouting matches, when discipline turned into gripping his arms until they bruised. But he knew the line was there.

Before, he’d had a Mommy and a Daddy. Now, After, he had two angry housemates who happened to conceive him, who, on some nights, escalated beyond just shouting matches.

_ It _ happened after one such evening. Hank had been drinking Pinot Noir straight out of the bottle, and Cameron’s ‘parents’ were screaming at the top of their lungs, loud enough to rouse the dead to walk the Earth once more. Cam shrunk behind his bed, pressing his headphones against his ears and finishing his Algebra homework. He had almost tricked himself into thinking they’d run out of steam soon, when Hank barreled in through the door.

“Cameron?  _ Cameron!” _ He grabbed his arm, and wrenched it upward painfully. “Look, me in the eye, boy. LOOK!” A hand gripped his chin and pushed it upwards.

He wouldn’t recount every grizzly detail of that night (honestly, he couldn’t even if he tried), but it ended with him curled up on his front porch, a swollen purple black eye blooming on his face, and a single droplet rolling down his cheek, leaving a path that felt like a brand on his skin.

He stumbled to his bike, and peddled away. He didn’t care where he was going, as long as it wasn’t home. Eventually, he collapsed in a back alley in Cinderbrush’s meager ‘Downtown Area’, a sad pseudodystopia of strip malls and college dropouts. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he felt something pressing at - no,  _ into _ \- the back of his neck.

_ “You are lost. You are afraid. I have been watching you, Cameron Solomon. You have potential.” _

(This was about the point he thought Jamie had somehow Hexed him long distance. That would have been preferable, but alas.)

“What the...who the fuck are you?”

_ “I am Anukirai. And I can help you become so much more. If only you make a bargain.” _

“Bargain?”

_ “Help free me from the shackles that contain me, and you will have everything you could desire. No one will hurt you ever again.” _

Really, could you blame him for accepting?

(You could. You should. But he can’t let himself think that.)

He wakes up the next morning with a cold stone sitting heavy in his belly, and a voice in the back of his head. Before and After.

Often, the demon in his mind fades to the background, nothing more than a chill of uncanny awareness on the back of his neck. Always present, but not always  _ present. _ A niggling urge in the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch.

But sometimes (often), when Cameron is alone with his thoughts, he finds his thoughts have been taught to talk back.

_ “You are squandering your gifts, Cameron. I do not ask for much more than you have already given me. You can be anything.” _

Sometimes he just listens and does his best to ignore. Sometimes he tugs his headphones on. Sometimes he runs to one of us partners.

(Sometimes he bangs his head against the wall, but that’s not important.)

(To him, anyway.)

He tries his damnedest to fight against the monster in his head, but every so often, he gives in. 

When he needs to know something to give the four of them a bit of edge, give Sasha one more loose thread to pull on and make the whole thing unravel, Anukirai comes calling. When he has been beaten in a pulp, and can’t attract suspicion, he turns to the dark power.

He’s a puppet, tying his own strings. And sometimes, he’s made to dance.

He is hollowed out, pulled away from himself, like he’s watching his own body as a specter, green smoke clouding his sight and thoughts. Helpless.

The demon takes him for a test drive, testing him to see exactly where and how he breaks. Cameron gives up secrets, desires, sensations, and in Anukirai’s spectral hands they become fine needles, poking and prodding his every vulnerability. 

And it works. God, does it work. Cameron does things that are wrong enough to give Hannibal Lecter shivers, or at least it feels that way. Just for a moment of solace in his own mind. But he’s not allowed even that small comfort. 

He does not have a kind master. He bites the hand that feeds him, but the hand bites back. And when Cameron is used up and spent, he is tossed out like shattered China, a toy that can’t be charged. And when he’s finally reassembled himself, it happens all over again.

He tricks himself into feeling a certain kind of peace, in just spectating his own existence. Maybe that’s why he’s attracted to the people he is. But the illusion crumbles as soon as he crashes back to full autonomy.

He used to pick up his pieces himself. Now, he has three extra pairs of hands, and a little bit more of an idea of what he’s doing.

After one such episode, after a Friday night spent combing the town in a fiend’s service, he collapses into the fetal position and curls up next to a bike rack. The sickly green leaves his vision and he feels lost, tetherless, detached, like he’s still not present. 

A well-manicured hand takes his as Sasha hauls him to his feet, brushing a strand of hair out of his eyes. “We’re going to the café for breakfast. You’re coming with us, right?”

“Of course.” Sasha, beautiful Sasha, what would he do without her and Aff and Jamie?

They make their way to Roastwise Café, a little Mom and Pop café in the business parts of town. (Just five blocks away from where he made his bargain. Huh), and order their usuals. Black coffee for Jamie, herbal tea for Sasha, hot chocolate for Aff, and a Coca-Cola for him. They sat, gossipped about their classmates, and discussed Aff taking down the latest beast they’d come to blows with. The whole time, Jamie kept a hand wrapped around Cam’s left wrist like a shackle. It was a welcome contact.

“And I was like  _ grrrrrrr! _ And he was like  _ aaaaarrrrgggg! _ And I was like  _ aaaaaooooooowwwwwhhh!” _ Aff spoke in the most animated whisper he’d ever heard, gesturing wildly with their hands. 

“We know, we were there.” Jamie rolled their eyes, but a wry smile danced across the corner of their lips. “It was disgusting.”

“C’mon, you know you love me.”

“Only because you forced me to.”

“So you  _ admit _ it!”

Jamie collapsed to the table, hat charmingly askew. “You’re impossible.”

It was comforting to watch them banter like their normal selves, Aff’s impossibly bright humor and Jamie’s shadow-stark cynicism, balancing each other like night and day. Their bond sometimes felt more like that of siblings, but then they got insanely high on Jamie’s newest blend and made out like teenagers in the hideaway.

After they finished their drinks, Sasha drove them all there, ushering Cam inside. Jamie started fussing with their magical ingredients, potions and poultices, brews and bongs. Aff leaned against the wall, watching outside like a hawk with intense eyes.

Both of them were distracted when Sasha started sucking a hickey the size of Los Angeles in Cam’s neck.

He whined and keened into her touch, possessive and predatory. It hurt in the best way.

“You’re mine.” She hissed into his pulse.  _ “Ours. _ Not his.  _ Never  _ his. Understand?”

“Yes.” Really, how could he not?

Sasha beckons the others over. Soon, two more blemishes are decorating his collar, and he’s going to have to invest in bulk amounts of concealer.

God, he’s exhausted, and hungry, and scared. He feels like he’s been climbing out of a sheer cliff, fingernails digging into rough hewn rock until the flesh of his fingers had been carved away almost to the bone, when a rope was thrown down to give him a hand. And finally, he’s reached a ledge, and he's a little sick from vertigo but he can breath. He’s safe, secure, content.

The whispers in his head, for just a moment in the sun, go mercifully quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’ll about do it! Thank you so much for reading; I hope you enjoyed these morbid little character studies.


End file.
